In California's backcountry, seeking movie backdropsEvery year, thousands of film fans become location scouts of sorts as they search for scenes shot in the Alabama Hills, a badlands that has appeared in more than 700 movie and TV productions.By Louis SahagunPhotography and video by Mark BosterReporting from Lone Pine, Calif.

As howling winds tore through the eastern Sierra, Dan Gillespie and his wife Carol trudged along a narrow gravel path, their eyes alternating between photos they carried and the contours of a cove guarded by granite walls.

At one point, Carol held up a photograph of a campfire scene in "Django Unchained," which is set in the South just before the Civil War. She moved the photo to the left, then to the right. She squinted, then broke into a smile. Pointing to a nearby rock, she said that actor Jamie Foxx "stood right there."

The Gillespies and three other people on this outing were location scouts of sorts — and they had just found their prize.

Like thousands of other film buffs and historians who flock here every year, they found the location of a movie scene shot in the Alabama Hills, a high-desert badlands of gullies, canyons and outcroppings at the foot of Mt. Whitney that has appeared in more than 700 movie and television productions.

I was hiking around the movie and TV areas some years ago and found an old slightly wrecked fake boulder that was apparently rolled down the cliff onto some unsuspecting invading army or something. The thing was about two feet in diameter. Very crudly made, lots of sticks stapled together, wraped in some mesh, and coated with something like stucco. It's fun to find stuff like that. The finale battle from Gunga Din location is very interesting too. One other thing that stood out was the abrasive the surface of the granite. Those extras probably got ground up pretty good.

I watched Django Unchained on Friday and realized their campsite is my favorite little spot to camp in the Alabama Hills. A while ago I was frustrated to find that spot taken over by a movie trailer when I pulled in late one night. Guess they were filming then - darn it, I would have loved to meet Christoph Waltz.